This was the “Apocalyptic!” of the Assembly, its most admirable type of fanaticism. Dark and immovable as a Nubian archer in a wall painting, he might have been represented for ever holding the taut string and the arrow that should whistle to its mark. He was young, a mere boy--melancholy, olive-skinned, beautiful in his way. Cold, incorruptible, merciless, nevertheless, he--this St Just--was yet that one of the ultra-revolutionists I could find it in me to regard admiringly. Of all, he alone acted up to the last letter of his creed of purification. Of all, he alone was willing to do a long life’s reaping without wage, without even that posthumous consideration of a niche in the “Pantheon of history.” Like the figure of Time on a clock, he was part and parcel of the scythe with which he wrought. He must move when the hour came--cutting right and left--and with the last stroke of inspiration he must stop until the wheels of being should bring him to the front once more. Truly, he was not great, but, quite possibly, necessary; and as such, one could not but exclaim over his faultless mechanism. He sacrificed his life to his cause, long before it was demanded of him, and in the end flung himself to the axe as to a kindred spirit with which his structural and destructive genius was quite in sympathy. One must acknowledge that he made a consistent practice of that which is the true art of reform--to know whom to exclude from one’s system. Only, he was a little too drastic in his exclusion; and that came from a lack of _ton_. For your fanatic sees a reactionary in every one whose mouth opens for what reason soever but to applaud his methods; and the sneers which his sensitiveness regards as levelled at himself, he puts to the account of treason against his policy. “Citizen Crépin,” he said (for he had already identified my companion), “for the future, if you must ride rough-shod, I would recommend you to make the meanest your first consideration.” “But, citizen, it was no fault of mine.” “You have a voice to control, I presume?”--he stepped back and waved his hand. “_Allez vous promener!_”--and the carriage jerked forward. I shot a glance at the other as we passed. He was retired from the scene, and he seemed endeavouring to control the agitation into which he had been betrayed; but he looked evilly from under his jumping eyelids at us as we went by. We travelled cautiously until we were gone a long gunshot from the city walls, and then Crépin put his head out of the window and cursed on the postilions furiously. “_Savant sacré!_” he cried, sinking back on the seat; “we are whipt and rebuked like schoolboys. Is a Republic a seminary for street curs? They should hoist Reason in a balloon if she is to travel. That St Just--he will make it indictable to crack a flea on one’s thumb-nail.” “What were they doing in that quarter of the town?”